


glitch

by venndaai



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 04:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21229904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: The first time K2-SO saw Cassian Andor nearly die, he expected to feel anger.





	glitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/gifts).

During his reprogramming, 91.7% of K2-SO’s memory was deleted. As a result, he was never sure how much to trust his impressions of what life was like before the rebellion. He thought he’d never felt much emotion. There were twinges, now and then. Glitches in functioning. Maybe most humans wouldn’t call those emotions, but from what K2-SO had observed of humans, their emotions were really just glitches too.

The first time K2-SO saw Cassian Andor nearly die, he expected to feel anger. Anger had been the first strong, extended emotion he’d encountered, after the deletion and rewriting. Anger warmed his joints and fed his motors. 

But watching from across a dark and empty street as Cassian fell, shot in the back by the imperials his contact had betrayed him to, all K2-SO felt was a terrible roaring void. It was a uniquely awful experience. He pulled out the blaster rifle he’d been given and killed all of the imperials, and sprinted across the street and picked up the unresponsive Cassian and still no anger came to relieve the burning emptiness. 

It took fifteen minutes to convey Cassian to the city’s rebel safehouse. He checked his internal chronometer three times to make sure it wasn’t running slow. Normally any suspicion that he was malfunctioning would have alarmed him, but even that familiar twinge of emotional response would have been welcome. 

At the safehouse Cassian was removed from K2-SO’s arms and taken to a medical unit. K2-SO was not allowed to watch the medical droids repair Cassian’s burned insides, but several hours later he watched them move Cassian from the sterile room to one of the two kolto tanks, and Cassian was breathing and the rebel in charge of the medical droids told the other rebels that Cassian had been lucky and would be as good as new in a few days, and K2-SO found an empty corner and switched himself off, setting himself to turn back on again in three days. 

It was not like sleeping. It was nothing, until he turned back on with a grinding and whirring of servos. 

Cassian was no longer in the kolto tank. He was no longer in the base. 

K2-SO found him after three hours, in the smoky spaceport cantina. He looked normal. Intact, as far as K2 could judge these things with humans. His narrowed eyes watched the movements of the cantina’s inhabitants with a predator’s focus, at least until K2 came in, and then they just narrowed further in what K2 had come to learn was exasperation. 

“You are an idiot,” K2 said. “What are you doing, out in the open?”

“Get out of here,” Cassian hissed. “No one will-” His eyes darted around. “No one will talk to me with an imperial droid looming over my shoulder.”

“Good,” K2 said. 

Cassian let out a harsh breath. “This is stupid. I need to find someone going off world with no love for official paperwork, and I need to do it today-”

“Were you going to leave me behind?” K2 interrupted. 

Cassian’s head tilted to look up at him. “No. But I decided to let you sulk, if you wanted to.”

“It wasn’t sulking.”

Cassian shrugged.

The cantina was a lot emptier than it had been a few minutes ago. K2 lowered himself onto a cantina chair that looked sturdy enough to take his weight. 

“You seem fine,” K2 said.

“I’ve had worse.” 

“Well, don’t.”

Cassian’s face wrinkled in irritated confusion. 

“Don’t have worse,” K2 said. “I had to carry you. It was unpleasant.”

Cassian’s face changed. He stood, took a few steps over, clapped K2 on the metal shoulder. 

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Come on.”

It was a while before K2-SO worked out that the second expression on Cassian’s face had been pity. 


End file.
